Pollock and Jorn in Revolutionary Roads

An exhibition comparing the works of two of the most famous expressionist artists of the 20th century is open now near Copenhagen.

The “Revolutionary Roads” shows the striking similarities between Jackson Pollock and Scandinavia’s best known contemporary painter, the Dane Asger Jorn. Often, it is impossible to tell who is responsible for which painting. The two, however, never met and had entirely different approaches to their art.

While Jorn was a dedicated Marxist and a long-time member of the Danish communist party, Pollock, as an artist, expressed indifference to politics.

“We do understand from this exhibition that they are incredibly different. Primarily in their aims: art is a means towards society for Jorn. He is political. He is politicising in his painting as well. Pollock is focused in a different way on art as a separate world, a world apart from the social and political world,” says the exhibition’s curator Anders Kold.

The two artists were of the same generation, both born in the early 20th century. They were influenced by the great European avant-gardists, especially Picasso, and worked with experimental drip and drawing techniques. And they were both intensely interested in myths, be it figures of Norse mythology or Native American sandpaintings.

Featuring a large selection of paintings, drawings and prints by the two artists, “Asger Jorn and Jackson Pollock: The Revolutionary Roads” runs at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art near Copenhagen until next February.